BY THE WAYSIDE. 
• 4 
place for the hibernating stages of many in¬ 
sects, .like the plant-lice or aphides, which in 
summer feed upon .the. leaves.... These are also 
devoured by the birds named. In a single day 
a chickadee will sometimes eat more than four 
hundred eggs of the apple plant-louse, while 
throughout the winter one will destroy an im¬ 
mense number of eggs of the cankerworm, 
when these are abundant. As soon in spring 
as the leaves begin to unfold they are attacked 
by the plant-lice that have survived the winter 
as well as by many sorts of caterpillars and 
other insects; the notorious cankerworm is one 
of the worst of these. But a host of birds 
FEMALE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 
come to the rescue of the trees; the aphides 
are hunted by the beautiful little warblers 
which go northward in early May, -when ap¬ 
hides are thick upon the unfolding leaves. The 
cankerworms and other similar leaf-eating cat¬ 
erpillars form the favorite food of many sorts 
of birds: Robins, catbirds, brown thrushes, 
bluebirds, warblers, vireos, cedarbirds, spar¬ 
rows, orioles, and'fly-catchers all devour them. 
Passing now to the meadows, we find a 
rather specialized condition as to insects. The 
grass plants are low-growing, and have a com¬ 
paratively restricted set of enemies. These 
however, are sufficiently numerous to destroy 
the crop when not molested by their bird 
enemies. The roots of grasses are commonly 
attacked by white grubs—the destructive larvae 
of the common May beetles or June bugs—as 
well as by wireworms—the larvae of the click 
beetles—and plant-lice or aphides which are 
fostered and cared for by various species of 
ants. The part of the plant just below the soil 
surface is sometimes attacked by meadow mag¬ 
gots—the peculiar larvae of the crane-flies and 
their allies—while various crown and root 
borers affect clover and timothy or herdsgrass. 
Just above the soil surface the fatal work of 
the cutworms and army worms is done, while 
still higher up the effect of the grasshoppers 
and chinch-bugs is likely to be seen. 
Set over against these meadow pests we 
have the blackbirds, crows, robins, meadow 
larks, flickers, sparrows, and quail. Some of 
these birds have specialties in their meadow 
diet: in early spring the robin feeds very 
largely upon one of the smaller species of 
meadow maggots—the larvie of the bibio fly; 
the flicker feeds more freely upon ants than 
upon any other insects; the bobwhite or quail 
is one of the comparatively few birds that 
seem to esteem the chinch-bug as a source of 
food. The blackbirds and crows are fond of 
white grubs, while all these birds and many 
others feed freely upon army-worms, cut-worms 
and grasshoppers. 
The condition in that part of the farm de¬ 
voted to field crops is similar to that of the 
meadow’. The insect pests are much the same 
and the birds that check them are very sim¬ 
ilar. 
When avc reach the shrubby growth along 
the border of the woods w T e come to a place 
where insect life is very abundant. The grassy 
growffh scattered here and there in the more 
open spaces furnishes food for many sorts of 
insects, while the ground beneath the denser 
foliage is the hiding-place of many sorts that 
come from the bark and leaves above. The 
trunks and branches of the shrubs and small 
trees furnish subsistence to hordes of insects, 
vdiile the leaves yield an abundant food to 
myriads ol others. The most characteristic 
bird of these vmodlawn borders is the chewink, 
or tovdiee bunting, often called the ground 
robin from its living so largely upon the 
ground beneath the shrubby growth, where 
it is continually searching for insect food. The 
brown thrasher frequents the same situation, 
